AWP 2013: How to Avoid Post-AWP Starvation

The excellent new blog Writers for Dinner has collected a compendium of AWP Guides, mostly humorous, for your enjoyment, and has added in perhaps the most important guide of all: How to Survive Coming Home Broke. Full disclosure: Writers for Dinner is co-edited by our brilliant Managing Editor, Sarah Einstein. Here’s a taste:

But, here is the thing, nobody really talks about how to survive the toughest time at all for most of us: the two weeks between AWP and your next paycheck. So, my goal today is to help you avoid that awful moment when you realize that you’ve completed your collection of every book Rose Metal Press has ever published, but you don’t have enough money for food by sharing with you my pre-AWP shopping list.

The Pre-AWP Shopping Trip to Avoid Post-AWP Starvation:

1 jar of peanut butter

2 boxes of pasta (one spaghetti, one not)

1 jar cheap pasta sauce

1 can of chopped, fire roasted tomatoes

1lb dried pinto beans

1lb brown rice

1lb dried split peas

3 boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix

2lb bag of carrots

5lb bag of red potatoes

3lb bag of sweet onions

1 doz egg

1lb of the sort of grocery store cheese that you would never buy if poverty weren’t an issue, but it is, so forgive yourself and just buy it

2 loaves of bread (freeze these before you leave for AWP)

1.5 lbs cheap ground beef or turkey, divided into three freezer bags and frozen before you leave

2 cans of tuna

3 ham hocks

1 bag frozen cauliflower

1 bag frozen peas

1 bag frozen green peppers and onions

1 bag frozen broccoli

One gallon of milk (okay, you may just want to stick five bucks on top of your fridge so you can buy this when you get back)

Giant thing of toilet paper (more than you think you’ll need, because half of us come back from AWP sick)

My total for all of this was just over forty eight bucks, and it will (mostly) feed us for two weeks if it has to. Hopefully, we won’t come back from Boston so financially depleted that we have to live on this, but I’ve been known to just loose my mind at the book fair and it’s possible. It would be a soup-heavy, not very healthy two weeks with lots of grilled cheese and very few green things, but at least we wouldn’t have to resort to the ramen or boxed mac and cheese.